Stéphane’s Post for Sept. 27/10

In Between Storms!

This last week has seen almost all kind of weather here at the station (no, no snow yet)! We’ve had strong and warm south winds, bringing on amazingly powerful thunderstorms, calm and clear days, or cool and windy and overcast days, with – as today September 27 – lots of rain.

In between these storms, birds manage to sneak through, taking advantage of good weather to migrate. Remember that good weather could mean something completely different whether you’re at your cottage, you’re a farmer at harvest time, or you’re a 7-g songbird on its way to Central America. A strong tailwind is always appreciated in the later case, which, in autumn, more often than not, is a North wind associated with a cold front moving through.

So, migration has been going strong lately, as well as banding. The rear guard of warblers is still moving through, with a few individuals of species like Black-and-White, Black-throated Blue & Green, Palm, Orange-crowned, Tennessee, Nashville Warblers. At the same time, and creating a nice mix, we’re getting the harbingers of cold: White-crowned Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, Kinglets (and lots of them at times), Brown Creepers, Pine Siskins…

Interestingly, a Least Flycatcher was caught on Sunday September 26, and a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher the next day!

A proud member of the Canadian Migration Monitoring Network

The Cabot Head Research Station is one of 25 bird migration monitoring stations across Canada. Providing baseline information on avian populations by sampling migrants, by capture or observation, daily during migration contributes to our knowledge about bird populations and movement.